Kathleen Herbert tells the story of BoP.
BoP was conceived in March of this year in Bristol. It is a collaboration of two artists, Rita Castro Neves and myself. I am based in Bristol and Rita lives and works in Porto.           I first met Rita whilst she was participating in the one month invitational residency at Spike Island. 1 was her link artist. I was to show her round Bristol, introduce her to other artists and generally be a friendly face in a foreign city. After many discussions about issues in our work we decided that we should collaborate together in an exhibition in Porto.             As Rita was based in Porto she organised the majority of the exhibition. She found a gallery in Porto called Caldeira 213. The gallery used to be a shop, which a group of young artists have taken over its lease and run the space as a gallery. The programme is a mixture of all art forms including performance and dance. We were keen to exhibit in the space, as it was an artist led initiative and we wanted to give support to their programme. Also I wanted to establish a link with a similar organisation to Spike Island to create opportunities for future projects to develop.                           I arrived in Porto on the Saturday evening; the show was to open on the Thursday night. After seeing the space, Rita and I decided that for the work to be exhibited at its best we needed to build two projection walls. As neither Rita or I had ever built temporary walls it was a great learning experience and I think we both surprised ourselves in our finished product.                                                                   Rita exhibited a video piece that she made during her residency at Spike Island. The video was a close up view of a couple moving closely round each other almost like a dance. I exhibited a new piece called Untitled (embroidery machine). The video is of a close up view of an industrial embroidery machine needle stitching the machinists' signature into a piece of cloth.                                                 We had a very good response from the show with a review in the local section of the national paper. From this exhibition I was asked to exhibit another piece of work for the one day Dia E Vento Festival at the Teatro Campo Alegre in Porto. Whilst I was in Porto I had the opportunity to see the Biennale and meet other artists in the city and establish some contacts to develop future projects. As for Rita and I, we have plans for BoP part two, another collaboration next year in Bristol.
Finally I would like to thank the Bristol Oporto Foundation for my award: I would not have been able to travel to Porto without it. What has been so fulfilling is the feeling that this is just the beginning of a series of new projects between Bristol and Oporto artists.